The Identity Crisis of post-1997 Hong Kong: An Examination of the Composition and Fluidity of Hong Kong Identity

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terence Ho
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Power Distribution ◽  
Beijing Olympics ◽  
Dual Purpose ◽  
Mainland Chinese ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Social Positioning ◽  
British Colony ◽  
Chinese Girl

Hong Kong's history as a former British colony and current Special Administrative Region of China presents a unique case study in the formation of identity. To this day, many residents of Hong Kong do not view themselves as Chinese, that is, part of the People's Republic of China. Rather, surveys conducted by the Chinese University of Hong Kong reveal locals adopt the labels of "Hong Konger in China", "Chinese in Hong Kong" and "Hongkonger". In light of these findings, this study will examine the composition and fluidity of Hong Kong identity. This study will first show how Hong Kong fails to meet the criteria for a unified identity with China as outlined by Anthony Smith in National Identity. The study then draws from Agnieszka Joniak-Lüthi's assertion in The Han Minzu, Fragmented Identities and Ethnicity that identities serve a dual purpose: as explanations of events and processes, and also as tokens of social positioning in instances of power distribution. The study proceeds to analyze four situations in which locals in Hong Kong chose to adopt either a Hong Kong identity or a Chinese identity, depending on the benefits and status procured from each identity: a mainland Chinese girl eating noodles on the subway, mainland Chinese mothers giving birth in Hong Kong, the Diaoyu islands dispute, and the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The study confirms that Hong Kong and Chinese identities co-exist among Hong Kong residents. Moreover, the study concludes that Hong Kong identity, despite its ambiguity, is undoubtedly calculated and reasoned.

Colonial Hong Kong as a Cultural-Historical Place

2006 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 517-543 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOHN M. CARROLL
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Special Administrative Region ◽  
Mainland Chinese ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Administrative Region ◽  
British Colony ◽  
Ancient Times ◽  
No Man's Land ◽  
Television Studio ◽  
Research Institute

In July 1997, when Hong Kong reverted to Chinese sovereignty, this former British colony became a new kind of place: a Special Administrative Region (SAR) of the People's Republic of China (PRC). In the several years leading up to the 1997 transition, a sudden outpouring of Mainland Chinese scholarship stressed how Hong Kong had been an inalienable part of China since ancient times. Until then, however, Hong Kong had rarely figured in Mainland Chinese scholarship. Indeed, Hong Kong suffered from what Michael Yahuda has called a “peculiar neglect”: administered by the British but claimed by China, it was “a kind of bureaucratic no-man's land.” Only one university in all of China had a research institute dedicated primarily to studying Hong Kong. As part of this new “Hong Kong studies” (Xianggangxue), in 1997 China's national television studio produced two multi-episodic documentaries on Hong Kong: “One Hundred Years of Hong Kong” (Xianggang bainian) and “Hong Kong Vicissitudes” (Xianggang cangsang). The studio also produced two shorter documentaries, “One Hundred Points about Hong Kong” (Xianggang baiti) and “The Story of Hong Kong” (Xianggang de gushi). The “Fragrant Harbor” that PRC historians had generally dismissed as an embarrassing anachronism in a predominantly postcolonial world suddenly found its way into millions of Mainland Chinese homes.

Leading the Way: The United Kingdom's financial and trade relations with Socialist China, 1949–1966

2016 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
ROBERTO PERUZZI
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Industrial Development ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Trade Relations ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
British Colony ◽  
Foreign Office ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Cold War

AbstractThis article aims to deepen scholarly understanding of the special political and economic connection between Britain and Socialist China during the 1950s and the 1960s. After 1949, the British government had substantive reasons to preserve a link with Beijing, despite the unfolding of the Cold War. First, British assets in China were numerous. Second, the Crown colony of Hong Kong was an indispensable strategic enclave, although militarily indefensible. Third, the Foreign Office considered that Asia should represent an exception to unquestioned British loyalty to the Atlantic alliance, since the United Kingdom needed to prove that it was able to represent and preserve Commonwealth interests in the area. The article will point out that the United Kingdom maintained a privileged role as the main trading partner of the People's Republic of China (PRC) outside the Socialist bloc, thanks to the financial and commercial role played by Hong Kong. This is proved through an analysis of the fate of British financial institutions in China, which represented a favourable exception in the bleak scenario of the PRC nationalization process, as well as of the industrial development of the British colony, which was based on importing food and labour from the mainland, while serving as a financial hub in support of the PRC economy.

Post/Colonial Bach

2021 ◽  
pp. 59-76
Author(s):  
Yvonne Liao
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Hong Kong ◽  
Special Administrative Region ◽  
European Perspective ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
City Hall ◽  
Administrative Region ◽  
British Colony ◽  
The City

This chapter contributes a new post-European perspective to Bach studies, re-examining J. S. Bach as a colonial import in Hong Kong in relation to its post/colonial condition across a British colony (1842–1997) and a Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China (1997–present). Based on its proposition of rethinking Europe “after Europe,” the chapter considers post/colonial Bach across three specific institutions: The Helena May, a colonial club originally for women members; the Anglican St John’s Cathedral in the early 1900s and “landmark churches” (i.e., declared monuments or listed buildings) in the 2010s; and the City Hall in the later decades of the twentieth century. The chapter concludes with some further thoughts on the symbolism of post/colonial Bach, extending from its significance for Bach studies to related matters of historiography.

Posthistoricity

2019 ◽  
pp. 157-195
Author(s):  
Victor Fan
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
Industrial Transformation ◽  
Civic Society ◽  
Mainland Chinese ◽  
Complex Process ◽  
1997 Handover ◽  
Economic Partnership

This chapter examines Hong Kong-Mainland co-productions made under the Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA). CEPA facilitated the collaboration between Mainland Chinese investors and Hong Kong filmmakers to produce films that are supposed to cater to audiences in both regions. This triggered a renewed effort to individuate, subjectivise, and autonomise Hong Kong’s sociopolitical voice and position in these co-productions, which requires an active rewriting and re-understanding of extraterritoriality in the aftermath of the 1997 handover as a form of posthistoricity: (1) as a continual performance of a civic society that had already failed under global neoliberalism; (2) as an invocation of a new assembly of biopolitical lives that are eager to form a new civic society. This chapter first explicates the sociopolitical conditions and affects in Hong Kong after 1997. It then expounds how CEPA emerged out of a complex process of industrial transformation under neoliberalism between the 1990s and the early 2000s and how scholars evaluate the first ten years of Hong Kong-Mainland co-productions after CEPA. With such a background in mind, it scrutinises how Hong Kong filmmakers confront the crisis of authorship under CEPA in three registers––industrial, creative, and sociopolitical––with close attention to Johnnie To as a case study.

The Hangover after the Handover

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helena Y.W. Wu
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Cultural Representations ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
British Colony ◽  
One Country Two Systems ◽  
The One ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Interdisciplinary Study

As a former British colony (1842-1997) and now a Special Administrative Region (from 1997 onwards) practicing the “One Country Two Systems” policy with the People’s Republic of China, Hong Kong has witnessed at all times how relations are formed, dissolved and refashioned amidst changing powers, identities and narratives. With an eye to real-life events and cultural representations, the book presents an interdisciplinary study of “local relations” through the lens of the things and places that stand or that have once stood for Hong Kong’s “local”. The book argues that the signification of the local and the constellation of local relations embody the continuous acts of deterritorialization and reterritorialization beyond the political arena and through the cultural and social relations formed between cultural icons and urban dwellers. In its post-handover, post-hangover years where Hong Kong’s local multiples by appearance and connotation as in the 2014 Umbrella Movement and the 2019 Anti-Extradition Bill Protests, the book proposes lessons to learn from the city in face of the discourses of nationalism, globalization and localism. As more are to unfold, the book opens up manifold postcolonial perspectives by the agency of both human and nonhuman to confront and interrogate the contemporary experiences—unprecedented since the Cold War era—shared by Hong Kong and the world where established beliefs and systems are continuously challenged in the postmillennial era. After all, what does it mean, or take, to live in post-1997 Hong Kong when the local, global and national are constantly given new meanings?

scholarly journals Higher Education Restructuring and Academic Freedom in Hong Kong

2008 ◽  
Vol 6 (5) ◽  
pp. 589-600 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carole J. Petersen ◽  
Jan Currie
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Academic Freedom ◽  
Mainland China ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Systems Model ◽  
Basic Law ◽  
British Colony ◽  
Publicly Supported ◽  
The One ◽  
National Governments

A former British colony, Hong Kong was reunited with the People's Republic of China in 1997 under the ‘one country two systems’ model. The Hong Kong Basic Law contains detailed provisions for academic freedom, ensuring that local academics enjoy far greater freedom than their counterparts in mainland China. Hong Kong academics and the broader community have also publicly supported academic freedom when they perceived it to be under threat. The authors argue, however, that the recent restructuring of Hong Kong's universities may ultimately pose a greater threat than any explicit interference from the local or national governments.

Intellectual disability in Hong Kong: then and now

2019 ◽  
pp. 99-112
Author(s):  
Phyllis King Shui Wong
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Hong Kong ◽  
Intellectual Disability ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Special Administrative Region ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
Self Advocacy ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
British Colony ◽  
People With Intellectual Disabilities

This chapter explores policy and practice in Hong Kong, and their impact on people with intellectual disabilities and their families. From a historical perspective, this development has consisted of three phases. Hong Kong, the world’s most populated area, remained a British colony until 1997, when it became a special administrative region of the People’s Republic of China. Early service provision began in the 1970s. This was followed by a so-called ‘golden period’ in the 1990s when it seemed that a new age of rights and family- and self-advocacy was dawning. From around the end of the twentieth century a worrying period of minimal progress and stagnation has threatened to submerge earlier gains. Life-stories reflect this trajectory from defiance and struggle in the early days, through the euphoria of progress and change, to the present state of anxiety as victory seems to appear in danger of receding.

scholarly journals A Bridge Between East and West: The Universities Service Centre of the Chinese University of Hong Kong

2006 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 585-588 ◽  
Author(s):  
Duncan Alford
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Research Topic ◽  
People’S Republic Of China ◽  
People's Republic Of China ◽  
Legal Research ◽  
Banking Reform ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Service Centre ◽  
Chinese University ◽  
British Colony

Fragrant Harbor is the literal translation of the Chinese (pinyin Xiang Gang) for Hong Kong. Once a British colony and now a Special Administrative Region within the People's Republic of China, Hong Kong is also a global financial center. In June 2006 I had the privilege of conducting legal research as a visiting scholar at the Universities Service Centre of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. My research topic was the influence of Hong Kong banking law on banking reform in the People's Republic of China. The following is a brief summary of my research and experience there.

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